Viktor Frankl And The Holocaust

We are meant to become our truest selves by finding meaning in our lives, which, according to Frankl, can come from three places: work, love, and our attitude in the face of horrific suffering or difficulty. And at the center of this meaning is our responsibility and human right to choose. In Frankl’s theory, we all strive to fulfill a self-chosen goal, from which meaning has the potential to be found. And if no meaning is found, there is meaning yet to be found, or meaning to be drawn from the apparent lack of meaning. Whatever the case, Frankl viewed man’s lack of meaning as the greatest existential crisis, the stress of this meaninglessness giving life and shape to all of our neuroses.

Madison Burr Ms. Logan English 9, E 25 September 2017 God does not exist in Auschwitz Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of

Shock, apathy, and disillusionment were three psychological stages that the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps experienced. Ironically, it took an event of such tragedy and destruction to enable us to learn more about how the human mind responds to certain situations. Frankl’s methods for remaining positive can be used by every human being to give them a meaning in their lives regardless of what predicament or mental state they are in – it is in many ways like a phoenix risen from the

The Holocaust, yet another unpleasant time in history tainted with the blood and suffering of man. Human beings tortured, executed and starved for hatred and radical ideas. Yet with many tragedies there are survivors, those who refused to die on another man’s command. These victims showed enormous willpower, they overcame

After World War II, many people survived physically, but were killed off psychologically by the mental torture of the Nazis. Not only did these prisoners ache from physical torment, but they also suffered from intellectual abuse for decades following the concentration camps and still recollect their inhumane experience during the

Abstract This document will explore the fundamental principles that confirm the importance of Frankl’s, Existential Theory and Logotherapy.

During the Holocaust, the survivors experienced torturous events that led them to lose their beliefs and identity. In the story Night, Elie Wiesel saw children burning in the crematorium and he commented that “Never shall I forget the flames that consumed my faith”(34). His experience of

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is filled to the brim with rhetorical devices from all three sections of the text. Particularly in his section about logotherapy, Frankl’s practice to find an individual’s meaning of life, he explores the three main meanings of life: accomplishment, love, and suffering. This area uses a plethora of comparison, such as parallelism and metaphor. Recurring themes are used to draw back to Frankl’s three life meanings, like word repetition and alliteration. Frankl’s use of rhetorical devices allows his audience to focus on their individual possibilities and incorporate his ideology into society.

Every single human being, at some point in time, goes through various troublesome experiences, be it a natural disaster, illness, an abusive relationship, a violent incident, or the loss of a loved one. However, some experiences are more devastating than others. Each survivor has his/her way of coping with the

People say that the reason we study history is to learn from our mistakes. The Holocaust was a very big mistake. The genocide that happened in and around Germany killed over eleven million innnocent humans, and was one of the worst of its kind. It is also imfamous for how

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl tells the honest story of his own experiences as an inmate in a concentration camp during World War II. In his book, Frankl answers the question “How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl describes his revolutionary type of psychotherapy. He calls this therapy, logotherapy, from the Greek word "logos", which denotes meaning. This is centered on man's primary motivation of his search for meaning. To Frankl, finding meaning in life is a stronger force than any subconscious drive. He draws from his own experiences in a Nazi concentration camp to create and support this philosophy of man's existence.

Six million perished in the flames, mass shootings and gas chambers of concentration camps during the Holocaust. This started when the Nazi party established a “Final Solution” that sought out to eradicate the inferior Jewish race from Germany and the world (“Holocaust”). A person cannot look at this event and see nothing except for the dark, evil side of human nature. However, if a person looks at the Holocaust from a survivor’s point of view, they can see the good side of human nature, especially if someone looks at it from Elie Wiesel’s perspective. Elie Wiesel and his family were Romanian Jews who were, unfortunately, swept into the Holocaust’s horrors. Elie managed to escape the Holocaust using tools of survival, including love for

The premise of Frankl’s book is that mankind’s desire for meaning is much stronger than its desire for power or pleasure and that if man can find meaning in life he can survive anything. Frankl introduces this idea [which he calls the theory of logotherapy] throughout his concentration camp experiences in the book’s first section and delves deeper into it in the second section. Referencing Nietzsche, Frankl tells us “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'” (p. 80). The most important thing to be learned from this statement is that no matter what your circumstances are, you can be happy, or at least survive, if you find a meaning or purpose in life. While in the concentration camp Frankl tells us that in order to maintain his desire to have a meaningful life he focused on three main things: suffering, work, and love. Of sacrifice

Dr. Frankl also explains his theory on neurosis and how it is tied to the meaning of life. Frankl differs from the ideas of Freud. Freud believed that the basis of neurosis is in unconscious motives. Frankl believes that the basis for neurosis is man's search for his own meaning. Furthermore he explains that ones own meaning is constantly changing; therefor, the means for our suffering is constantly changing. Frankl explains, "What matters, therefor, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment." Frankl describes we discover our specific meaning at a given moment. "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by